California Workforce as Calling and Profession

One of the slimmer and less known books by prolific Catholic philosopher Michael Novak is Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life.  Published in 1996 (and dedicated to his sister, Mary Ann Novak of Parsons, Brinckerhoff), the book discusses the spiritual fulfillment in work, especially work in the business world. The businessperson is […]

The Young Entrepreneurs Who Will Save the California Economy

As set out over the past few years at Fox and Hounds, there are big reasons to be concerned about our employment future in California. We have built vast entitlement systems that are far removed from jobs. The marches of technology and globalization continue to permanently eliminate jobs. Our retail and financial services sectors are […]

NextJob and Job Search in a Time of California Job Scarcity

This posting is one in an on-going Fox and Hounds series by Mr. Bernick with job search experts, on finding a job in a time of job scarcity. The Abbe Sieyes was a  French churchman and political theorist, who in the late 1780s was part of the push for reform of the Ancien Regime, and […]

California Job Club: Version 2.1

Over the past  thirty years, the Job Club has proved to be one of the most cost-effective employment  and reemployment strategies in California. Utilizing the approach of mutual support, job seekers help each other with job leads, job search strategies and unflagging moral support. The Job Club today exists in a range of settings, both […]

“When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness”– Perspectives on California Jobs Strategies

In California, we are facing our highest unemployment rates since World War II, and searching widely  for the correct “jobs strategies”—spend more on the state level, spend less,  cut environmental regulations, cut payroll taxes, add hiring tax credits, green economy, technology economy. To get perspective on our next steps we might turn back to the […]

Today’s Solyndra Hearing and the Future for Its Workforce

We have much more to learn about the abrupt closing of Solyndra, the solar cell manufacturer in Fremont and its layoff of 1100 workers. The story so far incorporates major themes of both the California economy and the U.S. economy, circa 2011: the impacts of globalization on the job structure in general and particularly in […]

The Jobs Perplex: California, Labor Day 2011

In California, we head into Labor Day 2011 with an
unemployment rate of 12%, and 2,257,000 Californians counted as unemployed. This
is an improvement over Labor Day 2010, when unemployment was at 12.4% and 2,330,000
Californians were unemployed . But, as previously detailed in Fox and Hounds,
this economic recovery has been very slow, far slower than previous recoveries
in California, and predictions are for unemployment to continue over 10% for
some time. We have reached the Jobs
Perplex
.

The past year has seen a small group of California industries
expanding employment.  Nearby my office,
in the South of Market area of San Francisco, hundreds of internet commerce and
social media start-ups are in active start-up mode, joining the established
Twitter, Zynga, and Salesforce.com  employment generators in the area.  

Hooray for BART! (for standing up for California’s workers against the ACLU)

(F&H “California Employment” poster Michael Bernick, former state EDD director, was a member of BART Board of
Directors 1988-1996, and today is a regular BART rider).

Hooray for BART! For BART Board President Bob Franklin, Vice
President John McPartland and the Board of Directors; for acting General
Manager Sherwood Wakeman; for BART spokesperson Linton Johnson (shown below);
and for the new BART police chief Kenton Rainey.

Last Thursday, August 11, BART officials learned via
Facebook that a group, No Justice No BART, was threatening to shut down the San
Francisco Civic Center station, and disrupt the evening commute. The group
previously had shut down the Civic Center station at the evening commute on
July 11, in protest of the shooting by BART police of Mr. Charles Hill.

California Job Training Updates: WIA, H-1B and Poizner/Lansing

Just a few years ago, California was flush with job training
money. The federal Stimulus of 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA), brought to California an additional $488 million in Workforce
Investment Act (WIA) funds-adult activity funds, dislocated worker funds and
youth funds. This $488 million was in addition to the $496 million in regular
program year 2009 WIA funding.

The ARRA funding has been near entirely spent and for the
2011-2012 year, the workforce community in California is facing a scaled back,
though still significant, WIA expenditure. 
Mr. Michael Evashenk of the Employment Development Department’s
workforce division knows as much about WIA funding as anyone in our state. He
prepared the following chart showing the WIA funding for the upcoming year.

California drops from $460 million to $402 million, a
decrease of 12.7%. This is a larger decrease than the national decrease
of 9.8%– $3.198 billion in WIA funds in 2010/2011, $2.88 billion in 2011/2012.
(The high water mark for WIA funds in California was in 2000 when WIA funding reached
around $600 million.)

What’s Going On With Job Creation/Job Destruction In California?

One of the least recognized employment dynamics in California is the enormous job creation and destruction that occurs reach month, in good times and bad. The monthly unemployment rate states the net number of job gains or losses, which usually number in the tens of thousands. But beneath the surface, each month hundreds of thousands […]